One of the Cloud/Scissors drawings was selected for the Arkansas Arts Council “Small Works on Paper” exhibition. The show will travel to several colleges, universities, and other public institutions in 2012. “Wild World”, the piece selected by juror Marcia Goldenstein, long-time professor of drawing and painting at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, is a mixed media drawing. The exhibition will open at the William F. Laman Library gallery space in North Little Rock in January 2012.
I’ve posted new drawings on Facebook, but I am woefully behind with updating this site. Please check out Recent Work under the Portfolio page to see my new drawings.
I am working on new drawings for a show at Halfmoon Gallery in Chicago. Halfmoon is run by my good friends Carie-Bires Cook and Matthew Crowther. Halfmoon is in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Carie is saving the universe one child at a time and Matthew is an awesome photographer. Check out his work, too! I knew nothing about apartment and home galleries until the two invited me to do a show in their space. So, I did a little reading. I found this nice article about the tradition of apartment galleries in Chicago by Caroline Picard on The Green Lantern Press blog. One of drawing students this year is from Chicago and he had this to say about going out to apartment gallery openings, “It’s what artists do, so it a nice crowd coming to see your work. Everyone likes art and wants to be with people who like art.” Very exciting!
There is also a faculty show in the works at Pulaski Technical College where I teach drawing and intro to visual arts. I can’t wait to show my students some of my personal work. They see me draw plenty of baskets and bones and rusted farm tools, but this will be something a little closer to my heart.
I’m finding a lot of things that I’ve never shared. I found this folder of photos called “Sell Couch,” with some copy from a classified I put out after a long-term relationship ended. I was putting my couch, well, our couch, up for sale. “Sell Couch” was like a line item in a long list of things I felt I needed to do to start over. Here’s what I wrote in the ad:
“I don’t know much about this couch, but I think that it represents where I went wrong in my life. I should have used the money my mom gave me for Christmas to buy a beautiful pair of cowboy boots, but instead I bought this used couch so me and my boyfriend could sit and watch television shows together. This past Sunday, my boyfriend called me on the phone to break up with me. We’d been together for six years. I see this couch for the first time and I see that it was a very big mistake. Now, I am selling this couch and I am using the money to buy my boots.”
A girlfriend took the photos for me and encouraged me to think of the ad as a piece. I posted it on Craigslist, but that’s as far as I took it. That summer, she and I called ourselves “Playing Possum” and every thing we did had to be shared with the world. More on Possum some other time. For now, I am relieved to share this small idea with you. I’ve worked so slowly on this blog. When I kept a diary, I wrote in it every day. I never shared the things I wrote.
Kimberlykwee.com is back after a very long nap. I will slowly be adding content to get caught up with myself. I am living and teaching college art classes in Arkansas. My current work includes drawing “Stories with Amnesia” and “Tupperware Party.” Links to these coming soon. I’m really nervous about venturing into comics and have been over thinking them for about eight years, so wish me luck. In the new studio, I’m still sewing and drawing. My new fabric work is with batiks in the same style as the islands from my MFA days.
